Strengthening your groin muscles comes down to targeting the five adductor muscles on your inner thigh through a mix of squeezing, sliding, and resisted movements. These muscles pull your legs toward your midline and stabilize your pelvis when you walk, run, or change direction. The good news: you don’t need a gym full of machines. Some of the most effective groin exercises use nothing more than your body weight or a resistance band.
The Muscles You’re Actually Training
Your groin is made up of five muscles that run along the inside of your thigh: the pectineus, adductor longus, adductor brevis, gracilis, and adductor magnus (the largest of the group). Together, they pull your leg inward, stabilize your pelvis during single-leg movements, and help control side-to-side motion. Weakness in this group is one of the strongest predictors of groin strains, which account for about 11% of all sporting injuries and are 6.5 times more likely to happen during matches than in training.
Best Exercises for Groin Strength
Not all adductor exercises are created equal. EMG research measuring electrical activity in the adductor longus found enormous variation between exercises, with peak activation ranging from just 14% to 108% of maximum. Two exercises stood out as the most effective and practical options.
Copenhagen Adduction
This bodyweight exercise consistently produces the highest adductor activation of any movement tested. To do it, lie on your side with a training partner or bench supporting your top leg at ankle height. Your bottom leg hangs free. Lift your hips off the ground while pulling your bottom leg up to meet the top one, then lower it slowly. The eccentric (lowering) phase is where much of the strengthening benefit comes from. If you’re new to this exercise, start with a bent-knee version where the bench supports your top leg at the knee instead of the ankle, which shortens the lever arm and makes it significantly easier.
Banded Hip Adduction
Loop a resistance band around a fixed anchor point at ankle height. Standing on one leg, pull the banded leg across your body against the resistance, then return slowly. This exercise scored among the highest for adductor activation and has the advantage of being easy to scale. You simply swap to a heavier band as you get stronger. It also works well as a warm-up with a lighter band before progressing to heavier loads in your main workout.
Adductor Squeeze
Lie on your back with your knees bent at about 45 degrees and place a soccer ball, pillow, or medicine ball between your knees. Squeeze inward as hard as you can and hold. This isometric exercise is a staple in groin rehab and prevention programs because it loads the adductors without requiring any movement through a range of motion, making it a safe starting point for beginners or anyone returning from an injury.
Lateral Lunges and Cossack Squats
These loaded movements strengthen the adductors through a full stretch under tension. Step wide to one side, sit your hips back over that leg, and push back to the start. Cossack squats take this further by dropping your hips as low as possible while the straight leg stays extended with the toe pointing up. Both exercises build strength at longer muscle lengths, which is particularly protective against strains that happen when the muscle is stretched during sprinting or cutting.
Sets, Reps, and How Often to Train
Clinical guidelines for adductor strengthening programs recommend 2 to 3 sets per exercise with progressive loading and deliberate tempo. For isometric exercises like the adductor squeeze, hold each rep for 10 to 30 seconds. For dynamic exercises like the Copenhagen adduction or banded hip adduction, aim for a 6-second rep: 2 seconds to contract, 2 seconds to hold, and 2 seconds to lower. This slow tempo keeps the muscle under tension longer and drives more strength adaptation.
Train your groin muscles every other day, or at least 3 times per week, to build meaningful strength. A typical session might include 6 to 10 exercises total for the hips and core, with 2 to 3 of those focused specifically on the adductors. Once you’ve reached your target strength level, you can drop to a single maintenance session per week to hold your gains.
Progression matters more than volume. Start with bodyweight or light resistance and add load gradually over weeks. If you can comfortably complete your sets with good form and controlled tempo, it’s time to increase the resistance or move to a harder exercise variation.
Warming Up Before You Start
Cold adductors are more vulnerable to strain, so spend 5 minutes on dynamic movements before your strengthening work. Three particularly effective warm-up drills target the groin directly:
- Open the gate: While walking, lift one knee toward your chest, then rotate it outward to the side before placing it down. Alternate legs for about 20 yards.
- Close the gate: The reverse. Lift one knee out to the side, then circle it inward across your body before stepping down. Same distance, alternating legs.
- Spider-Man walks: From a push-up position, step one foot up to the outside of your hand on the same side, creating a deep groin stretch under load. Walk your hands back, stand up briefly, then walk back out and repeat on the other side.
Keep your trunk tall during the gate drills and your core braced during Spider-Man walks. These movements take your hips through their full range of motion and increase blood flow to the inner thigh before you load it.
Why Eccentric Strength Matters Most
Groin strains typically happen when the muscle is lengthening under force, like when you plant and change direction or reach for a wide tackle. This is called an eccentric contraction, and it’s the phase where muscles are most vulnerable if they haven’t been trained for it. The Copenhagen adduction exercise specifically targets this eccentric phase, and researchers believe it protects against groin strains through the same mechanism that makes the Nordic hamstring curl so effective at preventing hamstring injuries. Programs built around eccentric hamstring training have significantly reduced hamstring injury rates in soccer, and the same logic applies to the adductors.
This is why simply squeezing a ball between your knees isn’t enough on its own. Isometric work builds a foundation, but you need exercises that challenge your adductors while they lengthen, under load, at speed. Building your program from isometric holds toward dynamic eccentric exercises over several weeks gives you the most complete protection.
Soreness vs. Something Worse
Some inner-thigh soreness after a new groin workout is normal, especially in the first week or two. Delayed onset muscle soreness shows up a day or two after training, feels like a dull ache across the general area, and fades within five days. A groin strain feels completely different: the pain is immediate, sharp, and pinpointed to one specific spot. You may also notice swelling, bruising, or difficulty moving your hip.
If you feel a sudden sharp pain during an exercise, stop immediately. Redness, focused swelling, or numbness in the area are signs of something beyond normal soreness. Pain that persists beyond a week or prevents you from walking warrants a professional evaluation. The goal of strengthening is to make these injuries less likely, but pushing through a genuine strain will set you back far longer than a few rest days would.